A Poem that Doesn't Suck

I have a poem up at Clementine Poetry Journal. It's so fresh it still has that new poem smell, but it won't lose half its value the second you drive it off the lot. Check it out if you'd like.

Bonus: An Interview and a Poem, Neither of Which Suck

Hi all,

First off, the lovely Nicole Rollender posted this interview with me at her blog Carpe Noctem. Show her a little love, why don't you? It's the first chapbook interview she's posted, and I'm happy to be a part of it.

Second, Lumen has posted my poem "Judas" in their most recent issue. Take a look if you're so inclined.

Two (Very Different) Interviews that Don't Suck

Hi all!

I've had two different--very different--interviews go up over the past few days, and thought I'd let you know. The first is at Donna Vorreyer's blog Put Words Together. Make Meaning. There, I fill in the blanks for some ridiculous questions. You may never look at waffle fries or Katy Perry the same way again.

And if you're into poetry, process, or monster movies, you might want to take a look at my interview at Nancy Chen Long. She asked really thoughtful, insightful questions about my chapbook Creature Feature, and I did my best to not sound like a douche while answering them. She also includes a zillion links--you could get lost in monster movie back story, if that's your thing. And why wouldn't it be?

Thanks to both Donna and Nancy for taking the time to talk to me!

Bonus: Three Poets Who Don't Suck, Pittsburgh Edition

Friends, one week from tonight, I'll be reading at Classic Lines in Pittsburgh. I'll be there with Krista Cox and Jen Stein Hauptmann (sometimes a.k.a. Jen Stein) at 7 p.m. You come, too. It's free! It's fun! It's me and some other cool poets you can hug in person!*

Classic Lines
5825 Forbes Blvd.
Pittsburgh, PA

*Please do not hug the poets without permission.

Three More Poems that Don't Suck

Three poems are up this evening at The The Infoxicated Corner. You can even hear me if you want to, because I made recordings.

Bonus: Three poems up at Front Porch

Three of my poems have hit the web at Front Porch. It's a pretty good week, my friends.

Bonus: Charybdis

It's a good week for my poems, I guess. Here is my poem "Charybdis," which went live at The Wide Shore today.

Bonus: Two Poems (that Don't Suck)

Hi again!

Thought I'd let you know I've got two poems up in the latest issue of Compose. I hope you enjoy them.

Bonus Poem: Calypso

Well, hello again. The kind folk at Young Ravens Literary Review have seen fit to include my poem "Calypso" in their newest issue. Take a look. Read some other stuff, too, while you're there. It's April--National Poetry Month has less than a week to run!

Bonus: Three Poems that Don't Suck, Plus a Mini-Interview

I've had some people asking why I don't put links to my poems up here, or asking if I would, or asking if I do. So fine, throngs of fans. Here you go. Three poems, and an opportunity to find out how I feel about eels, right here at Prime Number . Hope you're all having a lovely Sunday, and thanks for reading.

Come See Me Tomorrow In Gloucester, MA

Hello, all--

I'll be reading tomorrow at 2 at The Hive in Gloucester, MA. An open mic follows. Plus: there will be cookies. I promise. I'm making them today. You know you want a cookie, so if you're anywhere that falls even vaguely into the category of "in the neighborhood," I hope you'll come by.

And bring your mom, if she's around. You know your mom loves poetry. And cookies.

Bonus: Process Notes for a Video Remix

Hey, all,

I don't often use this blog as promotional space, but Nic Sebastian over at The Poetry Storehouse has made a video remix of my poem "Secrets." Both the video and her notes on making it are available here. I have other poems up on The Poetry Storehouse website, too--check them out if you want, with audio or without, and read about how to use any of the work on the site in your own project. There is some super-cool stuff going on over there, let me tell you. My thanks to Nic--and to all of you.

You may now return to your marshmallow bunnies and hams. Or whatever it is you people do. I probably don't want to know.

The Writing Process Blog Tour, or Four Questions that Might Not Relate

Well, hi.

I've been off the post-writing wagon lately, just sticking to the FTTDS lists, because it's really all I can manage. Why? Well, this semester has been even crazier than usual for one thing, but also, I've been doing a lot of poetry stuff: the editorial work for Cider Press Review, co-editing a book of essays all related in some way to the poetry conference I help run in Connecticut each summer, writing a couple of essays to go into the book, putting together some chapbooks, writing. All that good stuff. And I've been reading like a crazy person, now that I've got my brain back from its 2+ year mourning-induced hiatus.

BUT. My friend Donna Vorreyer over at Put Words Together, Make Meaning asked me to participate in a writing process blog tour, so here I am, and here are my answers to the questions we're all supposed to answer:

What am I working on?

I guess, technically, I'm working on generating material for my second manuscript, but I'm not really thinking about it that way. In the past couple of weeks, I've put together two new chapbook manuscripts, and I'm trying to decide whether to send them to publishers or produce them myself. I'm playing with producing them myself (Santa brought me a bunch of chapbook-making supplies for Christmas this past year), and if everything works out all right, that's what I'll likely end up doing. I'll keep you all posted.

And while I often have some sort of theme or obsession pushing guiding me through writing individual poems, I don't have that right now. In the past, I've written several series that were designed as series, and while I was writing them, I didn't really write anything else. Lately, I've been writing poems as they come. Several of them tangle with the question of place—my place in the world, the influence of specific places, or some other geographic reference—but they're not connected to each other the way my poems often are. I'm not sure what this means, but I'm sure it'll all work out somehow. It's not the first time this has happened, but it's the longest I've gone without working on a series in several years.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Well, that's not really a question for poets, I wouldn't think. The genre of poetry is vast, and its various subgenres don't necessarily mean much to non-poets. For a while, I thought of myself as a formalist, and I do still love a well-crafted formal piece. Some of my favorite poems (either mine or those written by other people) are formal. But I haven't been writing in form much in the past couple of years. At the same time, formal elements have a huge place in my writing. Having written so much in form, I can't really divest myself of the rhythmic or sonic elements I've picked up there. I still tend to rhyme a lot, for example, but it's much more likely to be slant rhyme, and it's much much more likely to be internal rhyme rather than end rhyme. And all that talk of form aside, I recently wrote a poem that uses white space in lieu of punctuation. Old dogs and new tricks be damned. 

For a while, my poems were almost painfully tightly wound—I feel like if I touch one of those poems, it might shatter. They came out pretty close to finished the first time through. It took so long for me to begin to write them that I had a really good handle on what was happening before I ever put anything on paper. In the past six months or so I've begun to loosen up again a little bit, which is a relief, but even my more relaxed poems are more taut than they used to be. There's more tension there, and I think that's a good thing in general.

I realize this doesn't really answer the question. The question should be "How does my work differ from what it used to be?" Or "How has my work changed over time?" Tough. If you don't like it, get your own blog. I'll be over here, answering the questions I want to answer.

Why do I write what I do?

I'm not sure whether this is a subject matter question or a genre question. Subject matter is easy, so I'll answer that first: I don't tend to choose my subjects. They choose me. It's not inspiration so much as drive. And I'm not sure I'm the one who's driving. Sometimes I think I'm haunted. Sometimes I know I am.

As for genre, the simple answer is that I accidentally took a poetry writing course as an undergrad. It was mislabled in the course catalog as being "Intro to Creative Writing," meaning a mixture of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. On the first day, the professor announced that we'd only be writing poetry, and half of the people in the class got up and left. I was a little scared, but in a good way, so I stayed, and over the course of the semester I realized that I was pretty good.

The more complicated answer is that poetry has a power to speak that other forms of writing do not. I've written some terrible fiction. I've written some pretty good nonfiction. I've written reviews and academic work. I don't find any of them as satisfying as poetry. When I find myself needing to process an event, I turn to poetry. The constraints—be they length or formal challenges—force me to investigate the world in detail. I have to examine it. Here's a conversation I overheard while I was in graduate school. One of my friends (a fiction writer) was taking a workshop in which he had to create a synopsis of his novel-in-process, and complained about it at lunch to another friend (a poet):

HE: How am I supposed to condense a whole novel into less than 200 words?

SHE: You could write a poem.

She didn't miss a beat. I've always envied how quick she was with that reply, and I'll never forget it.

How does my writing process work?

Short answer: I have no idea. Long answer: It depends.

Okay, so the long answer is shorter than the short answer. Fine. Be picky like that.

Usually, lately, I've been reading. Not always—sometimes I've just been noticing things. But often, I've been reading. I read a lot of poetry, maybe more than I should. Maybe I should spend a little more time with every poem, I don't know. And sometimes—like with my "Dear Turquoise" poems—I'm writing without reading, without any kind of written stimulus, because I've been a poet so long at this point that it's my natural venue for figuring out what the hell is happening to me (or to anyone else). Those poems were kind of wild. I was deep into grief, preparing myself to lose my cousin Turquoise, and at the same time knowing there was no preparation possible. I wrote like I was possessed, and I suppose I was.

But the fact of the matter is that every poem is different. Some of them need ten or fifteen revisions to get to where they're supposed to be. Some never make it at all. Some come out practically whole. Some of them are warm-up poems for the poem I'm really trying to write. I never know what will happen at the time, and sometimes it's years before I figure it out. Sometimes, if I've hit on a really productive period, I'll write a poem I have no memory of having written, and come across it later. That's a little creepy. Cool, but creepy.

These days, my writing tends to go something like this: read a bit, pick up a notebook (or my laptop), write a bit. Put the book aside if something really strikes me; otherwise, put the draft aside and read some more. Repeat as necessary. I'm usually sitting on my couch in the living room, with the room as quiet as I can make it (I can't listen to music, but I can, if I'm really in a zone, have the television on. I'd rather have the quiet, though). Sometimes I'm in bed—often, I should have been asleep an hour previously. If I begin a draft on my laptop, it tends to stay there, and I save new versions any time I make any kind of real revision. If I begin a draft in a notebook, I'll sometimes go back and forth between two notebooks, writing the revision in one and reading off the other, and switching them as I move from one draft to the next. It all ends up on the screen eventually, though, and that's where I tend to make final decisions about line breaks (sometimes what works well in handwriting doesn’t translate well to the screen).

I also think my brain works differently depending on if I'm writing by hand or with the keyboard. Not better, not worse, just differently. I'm a really fast typist, for example, so handwriting tends to slow me down. Sometimes I want that, sometimes I don't. And my handwriting tends to be pretty big and sweeping, so I sometimes want a word processor so that I can see what's really happening in a nice sedate Times New Roman instead of in my more emotional script.

So that's it from me. Now it's confession time: I've had terrible luck getting 2 writers to sign on to answer these questions. So if you're a writer--even if you don't have your own blog (I'll give you space here)--and want to answer these questions about your own process, don't be shy. Let me know in the comments or send me an email.

I am, however, going to tag my friend Kristin LaTour. Right now. She's the author of three chapbooks: Agoraphobia from dancing girl press; Blood, from Naked Mannequin Press, and Town Limits: Red Beaver Lake, Minnesota from Pudding House Press. Her poems appear widely online and in print (Google her if you don't believe me), and while she's currently taking a break from her series "It's Not Dead Yet" at Luna Luna, but you will definitely want to catch up on archived posts and keep an eye out for her return this summer. She'll be posting on Donna Vorreyer's blog, and I'll post a link here when she does.

I've got room for one more tag, so don't be shy, folks. I promise that participating in the Writing Process Blog Tour is one more thing that does not suck.

UPDATE: Well, that didn't take long. Sandy Marchetti is allowing me to tag her. Here's a little bit about her: Sandra's debut full-length collection of poetry, Confluence, is forthcoming from Gold Wake Press as part of their 2015 Print Series. She was named the winner of the Midwest Writing Center's 2011 Mississippi Valley Chapbook Contest for her volume The Canopy. She was also a finalist in Gulf Coast's 2011 Poetry Prize and Phoebe's 2009 Greg Grummer Poetry Contest. Sandy has recently published poems in The Journal, Nashville Review, Phoebe, Subtropics, Gargoyle, Sugar House Review, Thrush Poetry Journal, and Stone Highway Review.

Bonus: One of the Dear Turquoise Poems

I'm ridiculously pleased to have one of my Dear Turquoise poems up at Redheaded Stepchild, one of my favorite online journals. Take a peek if you like. And I've got a new post ready to go up here on the blog soon--probably tomorrow.

Bonus: Guest Post at Lisa Romeo Writes

Hello there, poetry friends, process junkies, and various people who think I'm funny. I've got a guest post up at the great blog Lisa Romeo Writes. Technically, it's about how to handle working with a series, but if you know me, you probably know it's more about how impossible it is to handle working with a series. I hope you'll take a look.

Bonus: Books and Books and Books

Hey, all, guess what? My chapbook, Dear Turquoise, is out. You can read a sample poem (and order a copy if you want) from Dancing Girl Press. I'm proud of the poems, and I love the cover that Kristy Bowen designed.

I realize it's been pretty quiet around here lately, but it's all for good reasons. I've put together a second chapbook, called Creature Feature, which should be out soon. It's a collection of poems centered on the Universal monster movies of the '30s and '40s. I've been writing new work and trying to get it out in the world. I've been working on editing an anthology for poets and workshop leaders (more on that later), working on writing my own part of that anthology, editing two upcoming poetry collections from Cider Press Review, reading my way through my poetry library, and teaching. I've also been working on two guest posts for other blogs, and I'll post links to those when they go up. In short, All-Poetry Autumn has been amazingly productive so far, and I'm trying to go with it, mindfully and with gratitude. On top of that, I've been managing to get some running in, despite nursing a minor injury for the past couple of months (don't panic, Mom. It's nothing serious).

Which reminds me: I also have a couple of poems in the upcoming anthology Bearers of Distance:Poems by Runners. A portion of sales benefit the One Fund, to support the victims of the Boston Marathon bombing, so it's a worthy cause and a worthy book. And it got a review on NPR's show Only a Game. Cool, huh?

I do have a lot to tell you about, and I will. But for now, follow one of the links up there. Read a poem. Get a copy of the book or the chapbook if you like. Or go crazy and get both—I'm not gonna stop you.

Shameless Plug for Bearers of Distance (Poems by Runners)

Hi all,

Just a quick note to let you know that I've got two poems in this way cool anthology from Eastern Point Press. Half of the profits are going to The One Fund, to support victims of the Boston Marathon bombings. I'm proud to be a part of it, and hope you'll support it.

You may now return to your regular ad-free blog, already in progress.

Bonus Poems Two Days in a Row

Hi, all--I have a second poem up at the Extract(s) site today. Still doesn't suck.

Bonus: Poem up at Extract(s)

Hi all,

I've got a new poem up at Extract(s) today. One more thing that doesn't suck.

Bonus: interview on Dear Outer Space

Hey, all--I'm part of an interview series on process at Laura Davis' Dear Outer Space blog. It's a fun series, and you should definitely check it out.